First off the basics. Boot camp is the free version of MVM where you can go practice. Mann Up is the paid ticket version of MVM where things get real and you get more than random drops for your efforts. Bots come in waves and drop money when they die. Waves get harder as they progress, but there is a pause in the game in between each wave and you buy upgrades to your characters to do the harder waves. With that said and explained, lets begin.

Hopefully you are here because you want to learn more about MVM, Mann vs Machine cooperative gameplay mode, and why you may have gotten kicked or called a gibus. This is the first step in cooperation. Understanding that you don't know what is up. Unlike most guides for MVM out there, I am not going to spend time telling you exact upgrades. Even players with excellent skills can walk away from MVM frustrated. You simply cannot beat MVM even on easier missions without some level of cooperation and understanding how the classes work together. I'm making this guide so that you have the big picture view of WHY an experienced person is telling you to do things, so that you can cooperate better. Whoever you are playing will give you instructions that fit into the strategy that the team is using to win so that the team as a whole can reach its potential.

Ever been with someone raging in MVM either Boot Camp or Mann Up? Someone is angry because someone wants do whatever they want to do and "just have fun". It is the cause of nearly all instances of raging in some form another. MVM is a co-op game. Period. Even in Boot Camp, unless you are willing to help the team win, stay away. One of the most aggravating things anyone can hear is, I just want to have fun. That is code for, I don't want to cooperate and I plan on doing anything I want for my own amusement at the expense of everyone else on the team. MVM exists for people to cooperate and destroy swarms of blue robots, unless every single person on your team agrees that it is goof off time have fun by cooperating to win. Trust me, once you have been with a team that goes through MVM missions like clockwork, you will truly know what fun is.

At its heart, MVM is a tower defense game played at the 1st person level. Key to the game is understanding how the classes work together and what the broad needs are in a typical MVM game. Once you start playing advanced and expert, it is absolutely necessary to understand how gaps in capability of one class have to be filled by another. 6 individuals have a much lower sustained damage output than a 6 man MVM TEAM because of the class interplay.

Let me give you the simplest of examples. Imagine if a team full of great MVM players chooses all damage classes, but no one chooses scout. There will be a couple of the "great" MVM players that don't do their maximum damage during the wave, because they spent 5-10-15 seconds waiting to respawn after dieing because a damage class that doesn't get health from money were attempting to get the money that was laying around. So while you may have someone touting the fact that they did great damage, noobs may not understand that its not just about "them". Their bad choice in class, although they may have done respectable damage themselves greatly reduced the total damage output of the team as a whole. This type of class interplay is why practiced players insist on certain roles being filled. It is not simply about how good YOU can do. You may be a superstar but if you don't perform a needed role you reduce everyone elses effectiveness and make the team struggle. This is what generates the majority of vote kicks in MVM.

Damage, as you know, comes in the varieties of blast (splash) damage, bullet damage, fire damage and melee damage. Different classes do different types of damage and some, like Sniper, can cross over between 2 types of damage, in his case bullet and blast with his explosive headshot capability. Robots come in basically 3 varieties of small bots, giant bots, and tanks. Choosing the right classes on the team to deal with the bots at hand is crucial to beating waves easily and is the first step to winning.

In almost every wave in MVM, the following roles need to be filled.

Support: Almost always scout (money) and engineer (ammo, health, blocking/delaying bots) and frequently, but not always, a medic.

Damage: Heavy (giant specialist), soldier (everything) , demo (everything + uber medic specialist), sniper (everything + uber medic specialist), pyro (mainly tanks, but in the right hands can sometimes function similar to splash damage classes if he can put his back to a wall and bots always drop in front of him from over his head.

The single biggest mistake I see inexperienced teams make is to not understand how to utilize splash damage. In almost all of MVM, splash damage is what keeps a team from getting steamrolled. Bots almost always come out in large groups designed to overwhelm the team. Splash damage classes are almost always the answer to this problem. Demo, soldier, and sniper are the providers of this. Teams should be concentrating on taking out as many bots as possible as soon as they clear their spawn gate. Never even let them spread out. Splash damage is the most effective way to get as many as possible and your bullet damage classes simply cannot do this quick enough. Steamrolling usually begins when one of your splash damage classes stops focusing on the drop point to go chase a single bot that got through. That is NOT their job. Soldier is the least specialized class in the game. Soldier is mobile with his rocket jumps and is able to do massive damage to groups of small bots. To a lesser degree he is able to do very high damage to giants and tanks. His banners buff any nearby team mates to make up for the very small loss of damage against giants and tanks as compared to a heavy or pyro (remember their SPECIALTY is giants and tanks repectively).

Heavy and the engineers sentry are there to pick off the stragglers and/or focus on giants that make it through the initial onslought of blast damage. I see too many noob heavies play TOO aggressively and try to take out hordes of enemies. He needs to be just far enough back that he can pick off the survivors along with the sentry.

Pyros are best against tanks, especially with the phlogistinator. But see the comment above about how pyro can SOMETIMES perform as a splash damage class as the map provides a way for him to consistently get bots from behind AND it is in late waves where backburner or phlog is basically insta-frying small bots before they can turn and fire on the pyro. A good example is either of the ledges the bots fall off of on Rottenburg after they spawn. Pyro can sit with his back against the wall and kill them as soon as they drop. A bad example is the floor level gate on Bigrock. Pyros get slaughtered there. Reserve pyro for tanks only on Bigrock.

Scouts job is the simplest to explain but is probably the most high pressure. Get money, mark giants with fan o' war and milk anything that needs to be slowed or that your team is doing damage to to help keep them alive.

Engie needs to keep dispenser near the team and somewhere the sentry buster won't take it and the rest of the team out if you are dead when the buster comes. Dispenser is for the team, not just the engineer. Placements that feed BOTH the engineer and the rest of the team are best, but if you can only do one, the team needs it more than the engie alone. It WILL occasionally get destroyed when you put it in useful places, so keep canteens for rebuild handy rather than stick the dispenser somewhere it is safe but no one can use it. Look to experience players to show you proven spots.

Noobs forever argue with experienced people about upgrades. Once you learn how and why to upgrade what, your life will be easier. But the primary thing to understand to really get good at MVM, is that MVM is all about damage. The team is the damage source and the bots are what have to be damaged. It is a simple math calculation but it is not just as simple as the damage stats for each class you can find all over the web for TF2. No one has a guaranteed damage output, and you can't damage anything while you are dead. And if you are dead, it snowballs because if you are dead your job isn't getting done meaning someone else on your team is dieing because the job didn't get done.

In general, if you are playing a damage class, you want to upgrade so that at the end of the wave you have done, the most damage possible. That is done with smart combinations of resistances and damage upgrades. For example, if you are playing heavy and starting a wave with crit soldiers and you put ALL your money into firing speed, but spend most of the wave dead, your theoretical damage output will be very high, but your actual damage output will be low because you spent most of the wave waiting to respawn. An opposite example would be a demoman not buying damage, reload and firing speed upgrades but instead buying too many resistances. If his job is to handle a groups of medics, he may survive the initial onslaught with his resistances but the rest of his team is dead because the medics ubered and the bots pushed through the choke point because he couldn't get enough stickies laid to do the job quickly enough. Noobs frequently argue for reasons that make perfect sense to them. Example: Heavies arguing that they need ammo capacity because the engineer can't keep a dispenser up in early waves instead of damage or resistances. Assuming that you have an engie who is putting the dispenser in the correct position, this is typically a self-fulfilling prophesy. The dispenser is typically getting destroyed because the heavy is either dieing or not doing enough damage to a giant to keep him from pushing past the choke point.

If you are playing scout, you want resistances and speed and jump height so you can perform your roles. Going damage scout and not getting the money may help your team pass a wave, but you'll be stuck on the next one because the team has no upgrade money to get them past the harder wave.

As an engineer, you upgrade to do the single most imporant role in the game. Keep your team topped off in health and ammo. This means keep your buildings functional for as much wave time as possible. This also means having your dispenser in a spot where the team can camp it while doing their job. Those 2 tasks are in competition with each other. How can you have your dispenser close to team mates doing damage but far enough it won't get destroyed. The answer is maximum dispenser range. There is simply no reason ever for that not to be your first purchase as an engineer even when you don't have enough money to buy anything else. 2nd Priority is building health. In advanced and expert, max those 2 things in that order. Range, then building health. Always.

Medic is a class that I haven't touched on much yet. Contrary to most noobs, medic is not a required class. You typically do expert and most advanced other than two cities without a medic. But when a medic is there, shield is typically the highest priority and is key to keep fom getting steamrolled.

Other classes like spy and sniper are specialty. In most cases they are used in specific roles on certain waves, not for an entire mission. Look to your resident MVM expert for tips on when and how to use those.

• Listen to your teams experienced players for instructions on how to upgrade your class to get the most out of what the wave is about to throw at you.

I said I wasn't going to go into specifics, but here are a few mildly specific generalities :-)

I suggest taking a look at itsgalf's Guides. This guide is intended to help noob's understand WHY things are the way they are. itsgalf has some great detailed upgrade guides that expand on what you learn here.

Soldier:

• More rockets per second do more damage than buying damage straight out. Get that reload speed and firing speed maxed out before buying damage.
  
• Unless you have everything else upgraded don't worry about banner upgrades. Proper rocket per second output and clip size upgrades allow you to have your banner ready again after only a single salvo of rockets.
  
• Unless you have everything else upgraded, never buy more than 1 tick of rocket specialist.

Heavy:

• In most cases get firing speed up as quick as possible along with 2 ticks of health on kill. There are some exceptions, but that is a pretty good rule.

Demo:

• Get reload and firing speed up as quick as possible on your sticky launcher. You ARE using the scottish right? Scottish is king of MVM. A good scottish user as demo should be highest damage player. I consider Demo as the class most able to control a game as long as he has ammo and someone keeps spys and small bots from pestering him.
  
• I see new Demos putting stickies WAY too far out from where the bots drop like they expect the bots to stay grouped up and not shoot any of our guys until they kindly walk 10 steps into the sticky trap. Everyone is dead by then and bots are all spread out. Put right where the bots feet first hit the ground.

General upgrade or strategy tips:

• Unless you are spy or sniper, never buy health regen.
  
• Unless you are goofing off as demoknight or spy or there is no other choice, melee is bad.

I had been thinking about writing one of these for a long time and after responding to a forum posting about Caliginous Caper (Wave 666), I finally pulled the trigger. Read the forum post here, it discusses more specific details about what is in this Guide.

In closing, I'd like to say there are divergences from what I have written. The more highly experienced a team is, the more it can diverge and still succeed. But hopefully, this high level view will help people understand why they are told certain things and to not be so combative.

There are guides out there with plenty of specific tips for MVM. Read those and learn but be aware that due to the class interplay I touch on above, no class choices and upgrades can be made in a vacuum. If the team is using any given strategy your class choice and upgrades need to fit in with the strategy being utilized.

If you see this and see me in a game, let me know. I play a LOT of MVM. As long as people cooperate, I spend quite a large amount of time helping noobs learn. I'll be happy to help!

--GeTuT